Louis Fisher
(senior specialist in separation of powers, Congressional Research Service,
Library of Congress): "President Harry Truman went to war against North
Korea in 1950 without asking Congress for authority. Since that time. presidents
regularly have used military force by relying on what they regard as independent
and self-sufficient sources of authority, especially the commander-in-chief
clause. These assertions of political power have no legal
foundation. . . . "The framers
knew all about monarchical systems that allowed one person to send the nation
into war. . . . Instead of leaving the war power in the
hands of an executive, the framers relied on collective decision-making through
legislative deliberation. . . . The president could take
actions necessary to resist sudden attacks. . . . But the
president never received, as Mr. Clinton apparently believes, a general power to
deploy troops whenever and wherever he thinks
best. . . . "The constitutional
balance of power between Congress and the president has not been altered by the
UN Charter. mutual security treaties, the threat of nuclear war or other
developments of the period since World War
II. "It is hackneyed to argue that contemporary
conditions make it necessary to vest in the president the decision to go to war.
If the national security risk is great, so is the risk of presidential
miscalculation and aggrandizement -- all the more reason for insisting military
decisions be thoroughly examined and approved by Congress. Contemporary
presidential judgments need more, not less scrutiny." ("Clinton's Not King
--War Is for Congress," National Law Journal, June 19, 1995, pp. 21, 22.
See also Fisher's Presidential War Power, 1995.)

* * *

Judge Harold H.
Greene (District Court, D.C.): "Article I, Section 8, Clause 11
of the Constitution grants to the Congress the power 'to declare War.' To
the extent that this unambiguous direction requires construction or explanation,
it is provided by the framers' comments that they felt it to be unwise to
entrust the momentous power to involve the nation in a war to the President
alone. . . . The Court is not prepared to read out of the
Constitution the clause granting to the Congress, and to it alone, the authority
'to declare war.'" (Dellums vs. Bush, 1990.)

* * *

Jacob Javits
(senator, dec.): ""Declaring war . . . is only one part of
the Congress's constitutionally assigned war power. Article 1, Section 8
also instructs Congress to provide for the common defense, to raise and support
armies and navies, make rules for the government and regulation of the armed
forces and organize and govern militia. When combined with the 'necessary
and proper' clause, Article 1, Section 8 offers overwhelming evidence that
Congress is required by the Constitution to determine whether the United States
makes war or remains at
peace. ". . . It is
. . . one of the terrible ironies of American history that as war
has become more destructive, less humane and less controllable, the power of
decision over war has become increasingly concentrated in the hands of one
American. This trend of history carries with it a portent of death for
millions of human beings in the nuclear age. The American people can
reverse this trend by insisting on the reinstatement of representative
deliberations over the fearful decision as to war and peace." (Who
Makes War? 1973, pp. 272, 273.)

* * *

Arthur M. Schlesinger,
Jr. (historian): "The Founders were determined to deny the
American President what Blackstone had assigned to the British King -- 'the sole
prerogative of making war and peace.' "The
resistance to giving a 'single man,' even if he were President of the United
States, the unilateral authority to decide on war pervaded the contemporaneous
literature. . . . "There is no
evidence that anyone supposed that his office as Commander in Chief endowed the
President with an independent source of authority. . . .
The President had no more authority than the first general of the army or the
first admiral of the navy would have as professional military men. The
President's power as Commander in Chief, in short, was simply the power to issue
orders to the armed forces within a framework established by Congress."
(The Imperial Presidency, 1973, 3, 5, 6.)

* * *

Francis D.
Wormuth (professor of political science, dec.) and Edwin B.
Firmage (professor of law, University of Utah): "Until 1950 [the
Korean war], no judge, no President, no legislator, no commentator ever
suggested that the President had legal authority to initiate war. The
controversialists who have introduced the novel theory supporting such authority
have been obliged to revise the war clause. . . .
"William Patterson was a delegate to
the Convention from New Jersey and was subsequently an associate justice of the
Supreme Court. . . . In the latter capacity he ruled
. . . that 'it is the exclusive province of congress to change a
state of peace into a state of war.' No delegate to the Convention and no
delegate to any state ratifying convention, gave a different interpretation to
the war clause. These authorities, rather than modern theorists, should
determine the proper constitutional interpretation of that
clause. . . . "The office of
commander in chief has never carried the power of war and peace nor was it
invented by the framers of the Constitution. It was a century and a half
old when the Constitution was adopted. . . . The Supreme Court has never
held that the clause conferred any other powers than those of a military
commander, 'the commander in chief of the army and navy of the United States,
and of the militia.....' ".
. . The presidency, like other autocracies and semi-autocracies,
embodies a permanent danger. . . . The most fateful
decisions are functions of the perceptions, the misperceptions, even the
inattention of a single man. Neither the recruitment process nor the
office provides any defense against the idiosyncratic weaknesses that are bound
to be a part of the personality of any individual." (To Chain the Dog
of War, 1986, pp. 28, 31, 105, 110.)